Poor Girl
by ringtailedpheonix
Summary: Zoro finds a girl his age called Petil. Petil is an orphan and has a dark past and Zoro plans to find out why she's scared of pirates. Zoro's POV. ZoroxOC


Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece.

Enjoy!

The others had gotten lost. Again. I was walking through a forest when I heard a little bell jingle. I looked around but I couldn't see anything so I continued walking to find the others, wherever they were. That was when I heard the bell again. I got out a sword and yelled, "Who's there?!" I got no answer so I started walking again until I heard the bell again. I could sense where the bell was and I headed in that direction.

The bell jingled again and I could hear it getting away from me. I continued running until I ran into a girl around my age. She had dark chestnut hair and hazel-green eyes that showed intelligence. She was wearing a singlet, a pair of green shorts and some boots. When she saw me, she backed away a little bit. "Please don't hurt me," she begged.

"I won't hurt you as long as you tell me what you're doing," I said.

"I-I can't tell you that." The girl looked away from me. I grabbed her head and forced her to look at me. "Answer me now," I ordered.

Feeling scared, the girl finally answered me. "I-I was given an order to lead you to the depths of the forest."

"Who gave you the order?" I asked.

"I don't know." I raised an eyebrow. "Please I swear I don't know." I still didn't believe her. "Please believe me!" I looked into her eyes and I realised that what she was saying was the truth.

"Okay, I believe you," I said. "But what you're saying sounds interesting. So a random stranger came up to you and asked you to lure me here? Is that what you're saying?"

The girl nodded. "It's the truth, I swear."

"Now, tell me your name," I said.

"My name is Petil."

Weird name I thought. "So, Petil, what were you doing here anyway?" I asked.

"I was out picking berries to eat for my dinner," Petil replied.

"Berries? For your dinner?" I actually felt sorry for this girl. She had to eat berries for dinner? That didn't sound so good. Despite the fact that she could have been lying, I asked, "Would you like to join me for dinner?"

Petil's eyes widened. "Really?" she gasped.

"Of course. I was planning on going to a pub but if you want we could go to a cafe, order something nice." I forced a smile. I didn't often invite strangers to go somewhere with me by myself, but there was just something about this girl that softened my heart. Of course, my heart never goes soft just for anyone but Petil seemed like a good, innocent person.

As the two of us walked to the cafe that was in the middle of town, I noticed that she tried to keep up with my fast strides. I also noticed that while she was doing this, she seemed to get very tired. Suddenly, after much thought, I stopped and looked back at her.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

"N-nothing's wrong, sir." Petil ran up beside me with a huge smile on her face.

"You don't need to call me sir. My name's Zoro," I said.

"Okay, Zoro," Petil smiled.

"I notice that you keep trying to keep up with me," I commented; half to myself, half to Petil.

"I want to keep up with you, that's all," Petil smiled.

I just shrugged. "Okay, I think the cafe is this way." I turned right.

"Actually Zoro, it's this way. See? Can't you see it over there?" Petil pointed to a town and in the middle of that town was the cafe.

I blushed bright red. "O-okay, let's go." I started heading towards the cafe when I felt and a hand grab my own. I looked back to see Petil smiling.

"So you don't get lost again." Petil gave out the smallest laugh.

"You shut up!" I shouted. This made Petil laugh even harder. "Do you want to go to the cafe?" I asked. Petil stopped laughing for a few seconds to catch her breath. "Of course I do," she said. "Then stop laughing at me."

We walked into the cafe and was greeted by a waitress. I looked down at her name tag and read the name 'Zala.'

"Hi, may I help you?" Zara asked.

"Yeah, we'd like to have something to eat," I answered.

"Okay, sir, there are some empty seats towards the back of the cafe. Let me lead you there." We followed Zala to the back of the room where we were seated near a staircase.

"Where does this staircase lead up to?" Petil asked Zala.

"Those are rooms. We rent them out to our customers for the night," Zala replied.

"Ah, okay," Petil smiled.

"Let me just go get your menues." Zala disappeared for a second and came back with two menues. She handed them to us and said, "I'll be back soon when you have decided what you want."

"So what are you going to have Zoro?" Petil asked me excitedly.

"You know, for someone who's in a boring old cafe, you seem pretty excited," I said.

"That's because I've never been to a cafe. Or a place where they serve good food, and have waitresses, and staircases. Oh, and books and bookshelves," Petil rambled on.

I decided not to ask Petil about where she was before this, even though it was the only thing I was thinking at the moment. I changed the subject instead. "So, what do you think you'll order?" I asked.

"I honestly can't decide. I think I might have a slice of that delicious looking sponge thing."

"You mean cake?" I asked.

"Yeah, cake. It looks delicious. And it has lots of toppings on it. What's this white stuff on it?" Petil asked, pointing to the icing on the cake.

"That's icing," I replied.

"Ice-ing?" Petil tried to say the word.

"Yeah, icing. It's really good, you should try it," I said.

"Okay, I'll get the cake," Petil grinned.

"Okay, well, I'm getting what looks like a weird pie thing," I said. I examined the pie-thing carefully and realised that its contents were blackberry, blueberry, strawberry and raspberry. And that was only just the berries. It looked like something that shit cook would have made.

After we chose what we wanted, Zala came back to us. "Have you decided what you want to order?" she asked politely.

"Yes. I'll have the pie thing and she'll have the cake," I said.

"And what would you like to drink?" Zala asked.

"Hmm… I'll just have water," I said. "What about you, Petil?"

"Is the water fresh?" Petil asked in a small voice.

"Of course it's fresh," Zala smiled.

Petil smiled back. "Okay, I'll have water."

"You're food and drinks will be here in a few minutes." After Zala said this she hurried to the table near the front of the shop.

"I can't believe I'm actually somewhere clean." Petil rocked on her chair and looked around.

"What happened in your past?" I asked suddenly. Petil had been acting strange and I wanted to know why.

"I-I'm an orphan. I don't have anyone to care for me. You're the first person that actually wanted to help me," Petil said.

"So what's this about you being ordered to lure me into a forest, hm?" I questioned.

"T-this man, he came up to me a day ago. He said he was on the look out for a man with green hair. I figured that was you. I was told to lure him into the forest," Petil explained.

"But why did you do it?" I asked.

"He was going to give me $50 if I did," Petil whispered quietly, as if she was scared that I might hit her. "I was kicked out of the orphanage when I turned 18, which was a year and a half ago."

"So you've been living on the streets for nearly two years?!" I asked in disbelief. This girl seemed a lot braver than I thought she was.

"Well, sometimes I snuck into people's houses when they weren't there and slept on the floor, but usually I got caught and was thrown out of that house," Petil said.

"That's horrible."

"It's not that bad. I made a few friends along the why. Squeakers, Whiskers and Twitchy."

"Those sound like rat names…" I said.

"Yeah, I had three rat friends," Petil said.

"Well, now you have another friend. And I'm sure my friends will want to be your friend too. You should meet my captain, he's hilarious," I said. I wanted to give her some happy thoughts so when I let her meet the crew, she was actually happy to meet them.

"Captain? Does that mean you're a pirate?" Petil asked nervously.

I nodded, but really in my mind all I was thinking was uh-oh.

"I-I have to go now!" Petil stood up and ran out of the door, just as I was saying, "Hey, come back!"

To be continued…


End file.
